1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system for automating the process for creating a Request For Quotation (RFQ) document, and in particular to extracting information from the engineering drawings and specification documents used in an RFQ, and compressing the drawings and documents into a highly compressed format that includes information that was extracted.
2. Description of Related Art
A Request for Quotations (RFQ) is a complete set of documentation that communicates a buying organization's intent to buy goods and services. By issuing an RFQ, the buying organization is requesting potential suppliers to submit quoted prices for the items identified in the RFQ. An RFQ typically contains the information needed for a supplier to determine whether or not to quote, and at what price.
The RFQ typically includes technical, commercial, logistical and quality specifications. The technical information may include specifications for materials, tolerance, processes and engineering drawings. The commercial and logistical information may include information about the buyer, such as delivery address, trade terms and conditions. It may also include specific delivery information such as the party responsible for paying freight, special hours on receiving docks, etc. The quality information may include special qualifications, such as ISO9000 standards, lot acceptance and sampling specifications and testing requirements.
In the context of a supplier-bidding auction, the RFQ refers to the information provided to prospective suppliers before the auctioning event that describes the individual items or services up for bid, and other specifications that would affect cost to the bidder-supplier. RFQs used in online auctions between a buyer and potential suppliers may also have information about the upcoming online auction, such as auction start and stop times, bidding requirements and rules for participating in the auction. In addition, if the auction has the commodities separated into lots, the RFQ may contain information about the lots, and details about each line item in the lot. By reviewing the RFQ, potential suppliers can determine whether they wish to participate in an upcoming online auction, determine which lots they wish to bid on and plan a strategy for competitive bidding.
In online auctions, suppliers rely heavily on the information in the RFQ when making bids in the auction. It is therefore important that the information in an RFQ be as detailed and accurate as possible. If the RFQ were not sufficiently detailed, a supplier may not bid as low as he otherwise would, as a way of hedging against the potential unforeseen costs that are not explicitly identified in the RFQ. In a buyer-sponsored auction, where the buyer is seeking to save money by obtaining the lowest possible price by using auctioning technology, inaccurate or insufficiently detailed RFQs may result in less cost savings for the buyer. However, the time required to generate an RFQ for an online auction may be significant. Thus, there is a need to create RFQs that are as accurate as possible without adding to the amount of time it takes to create an RFQ.
RFQs contain a wide variety of information that may come from many different sources. RFQ information and documents may be acquired from an auction sponsor's own Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, or other internal management system. This information may be acquired either directly from the ERP system, or from a report that was generated using the ERP system. The drawings used in an RFQ typically come from the auction sponsor's drawing vaults. Additional RFQ documents may be acquired from process planning systems and quality systems. In addition to the information and documents that are acquired from the sponsor, the RFQ may also contain auction-specific information. This information may be generated by a third-party auction coordinator or by the auction sponsor, typically the buyer.
The information that is acquired for an RFQ may include both paper documents and electronic files. The electronic files may be of any number of known file types, such as Computer-Aided Design (CAD) files, raster image files, Microsoft Word documents, basic text files, PowerPoint slides, and Excel spreadsheets to name just a few.
Traditionally, an RFQ used in an auction has been manually compiled by a buyer or by an auction coordinator. After collecting the needed documents, the RFQ document is assembled into a certain format, printed and provided to potential suppliers. In the context of online auctions, these RFQs were sent to certain potential suppliers in advance of the auction, so that the potential suppliers could determine whether they wished to participate, and plan a competitive auctioning strategy. This type of manual compilation and delivery slows down the procurement process; therefore buyers and auction coordinators began to publish electronic RFQs. Typically, the RFQ has been published at a Website on an Intranet or the Internet, or by sending a CD with the RFQ documents to the potential suppliers.
For the RFQ to be electronically published on a Website, or through a CD, all of the documents in the RFQ must be electronic. Any documents needed for an electronic RFQ that are only available on hardcopy (e.g. paper, aperture card) are generally scanned to create a raster image file of the document, or otherwise converted to an electronic file.
An electronic RFQ may therefore contain engineering drawings in CAD files and raster image files, and textual specifications in any number of file types. Therefore, several different types of viewing applications, each supporting a different file type, may be needed to be able to view all documents in an electronic RFQ.
To reduce the number of file types used in the RFQ, the textual documents may be converted to a common file type such as Portable Document Format (PDF). PDF is a file format that captures all the elements of a printed document as an electronic image that can be viewed, navigated, or printed. The PDF format can be used for text documents and compound documents containing both text and images. By converting the documents to this one common format, all of the documents can be viewed with the same PDF file viewer application.
However, a separate viewing application is still needed to view engineering drawings that are stored in a format other than PDF. Switching between the viewing applications is time-consuming and tedious for the person reading the electronic RFQ.
Thus, there is a need for a method and system whereby a buyer or auction coordinator may compile and distribute an electronic RFQ, wherein every document in the RFQ may be viewed and printed using a single viewing application.
In addition, the files used in the electronic RFQ, especially the CAD files, may be quite large. While file compression techniques are generally known, different viewing applications are still needed to view the files once they are uncompressed. Therefore, there is a need for a method and system of compressing RFQ documents whereby a single application can be used to decompress and view all documents.